Google will appear before court officials on Tuesday from the Government accusing the company of antitrust violations in your large search business.
This began the long-awaited legal showdown that may reshape one of the most dominant platforms on the Internet.
The trial, which begins this week in Washington before a federal judge, marks the end of The ongoing lawsuits against Google, which began during the Trump administration. Legal experts described the actions as the country’s biggest monopolization case ever the US government confronted Microsoft in the 1990s.
What are they accusing Google of?
In separate complaints, the Justice Department and dozens of states accused Google in 2020 of abusing its dominance in online search by allegedly harming competition through agreements with wireless operators and smartphone manufacturers.
it Google Search is made the default option or exclusive to products used by millions of consumers. Finally, the cases are combined into one case.
Google maintains that it competes on its own merits and that Consumers prefer their devices because they are the best not because it acted in illegal restraint of competition.
“A case like never before”
Google’s search business will account for more than half of the $283 billion in revenue and $76 billion in net income reported by Alphabet, Google’s parent company, in 2022. Search has fueled the company’s growth to reach market capitalization of more than 1.7 trillion dollars.
Now, the company is preparing to defend itself in a week-long trial that could upend the way Google distributes its search engine to users. yea
The case is expected to have Testimony from high-level witnesses, including former Google and Samsung employees, with Apple executives including senior vice president Eddy Cue.
This is the first case in a series of court challenges against Google’s far-reaching economic power, testing the courts’ willingness to rein in large technology platforms.
The details of the complaint
“This is a retrograde case in an era of unprecedented innovation,” said Google’s President of Global Affairs Kent Walker, “including advances in artificial intelligence, new applications and new services, all of which create more competition and more options for people than ever before. People don’t use Google because they have to, but because they want to. It’s easy to change the default search engine: we’ve long since left the era of dial-up Internet and CD-ROMs. ”
The trial could also be a harbinger of the Biden administration’s stronger antitrust agenda.
In its first complaint, the US government alleged that part Google pays billions of dollars a year to device makers like Apple, LG, Motorola and Samsung – and browser developers like Mozilla and Opera – to be its default search engine. and, in many cases, to prevent them from dealing with Google’s competitors.
As a result, the lawsuit states, “Google effectively owns or controls search distribution channels that account for approximately 80 percent of total search queries in United States.”
The lawsuit also says that Google’s Android operating system deals with device makers are anticompetitive because they require smartphone companies to pre-install other Google-owned apps, such as Gmail, Chrome or Maps.
